


Like A Pomegranate Split Open

by amorremanet



Category: Original Work
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Dom/sub, Erotic Poetry, F/F, Love Poems, POV Multiple, Poem Cycle, Poetry, Prose Poem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 21:00:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This whole cycle of poems was written as a <a href="http://amor-remanet.livejournal.com/546405.html">picture frame extra</a> for kink_bingo, meant to be read as one longer work. Each poem uses one of the sixteen prompts in the picture frame.</p><p>The prompt used in the first poem is, "anonymity."</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This whole cycle of poems was written as a [picture frame extra](http://amor-remanet.livejournal.com/546405.html) for kink_bingo, meant to be read as one longer work. Each poem uses one of the sixteen prompts in the picture frame.
> 
> The prompt used in the first poem is, "anonymity."

Mistress — I still recall our first  
the alignment of our stars and how you picked me out  
across the crowded, foggy club, set me apart  
although there were others who deserved you more than I.  
They still do. Or they still might. I wouldn't know.  
I don't have that kind of insight into how you select a Beloved.

You cut a figure that in some-such form  
pricks itself out in my mind  
draws me back into orbit not  
around the totality of you but  
around itself; and that — oh, beauty; oh, brightest star —  
eclipses, sometimes, all other things, all other images of you.  
Your neck exquisite, taut, long and finely curved.  
You legs not like any towers of David  
because you don't have the patience for those hard lines  
that remorseless efficiency, that heartless chill.  
No, Lover, your legs towered in plush curves,  
rounding out in the thighs to strain the confined of your leather miniskirt  
then tapering back in again to form a heart  
(or at least to look like a cartoon symbol's silhouette)  
with your calves (so toned, so fine)  
with the perilous precision of your ankles  
with your spike heels' clacking, colubrine grace.

(I still don't understand, Lover, how you can walk in those things.  
How you can perch like that and how your ankles are so strong, so flexible.  
Much less how you can keep yourself from toppling over from so fine a point.  
Any kind of heel sets me reeling, primed to crash into the ground  
when I trample, trundle, trip my way through everything in life.  
Weak ankles sound so much more adorable — so much nicer — when you aren't  
the one who's stuck wobbling on them until question mark question mark time undecided.)

And I understood you so much less that night  
because you slithered through the throng and up to  
my seat at the bar (where I was so unceremoniously  
abandoned by the friends who'd in the first place dragged me out)  
Despite the pulp novel cover splattered on your tits  
— telling everyone I Prefer Girls so you didn't have to —  
I assumed you meant to buy a drink  
for the slick-haired Lothario seated to my left  
and not to ask our tall dark bartender to mix me up another Manhattan,  
plus one for you as well. You ordered yours in a playful sneer, one  
that didn't face surprise (as handfuls of your predecessors had) over our  
similar seeming tastes, all raised eyebrows and lilting syllables, all  
my lord what a stunning and unexpected coincidence that we like the same drink, or  
it really is so rare to find someone else who drinks this popular cocktail, good heavens  
but with a mien bespeaking your familiarity with whips  
suggested you'd eviscerate anyone — and I mean any-fucking one —  
who got between you and that drink, that impression you sought to carve.

In retrospect? I should've guessed  
that the subtext slipping in between your words  
couching behind them with its squaline rows of teeth  
was so simple, so elegant in its disregard,  
in how it hit me like a ball-peen hammer two-by-four  
and a round of bullets to the head.  
From your warlike stride,  
from that bloodthirsty glint in your green eyes,  
to how you wielded your cellphone like a spear  
(pretending to check messages you hadn't gotten)  
to the impatient way you tapped a hangman's procession on your glass  
I should've guessed that, had you any inclination, you'd whisper

_"Enjoy this cute concession, Kitten._  
Enjoy it while it lasts  
because it's gonna be the last time you have this upper hand,  
because I'll have you begging to do things my way  
before the cock crows thrice."

(Well, maybe not those words exactly;  
they're a bit too roundabout for your tastes. But I  
pray your indulgence in this matter, Mistress,  
because I just can't fucking help it. Because  
fucking you brings something out in me and  
that something lacks a sense of god-fucking-damned perspective.)

Of course, in fairness to myself?  
We didn't know each other, then  
not even shades of how we do now  
not even guessing out potential  
not even through a mirror, dark and indistinct,  
or through a glass, darkly,  
or however you want to translate that.  
But we knew each other threw a haze of clouds and lights  
and for all I teetered on my barstool—  
wide-assed, wide-hipped, wide-browed and Cherub-cheeked  
barely able to meet your eyes for the hot, sticky flush tickling up my neck—  
I didn't need to know you, not really. Not even a little. Not at all.

In fact, I think I liked it better  
especially with the splendid shape you  
sliced out for yourself, the way your carriage  
dared anyone to call your fat a flaw.  
You were beautiful, then. You're beautiful now.  
And it didn't matter that you didn't want to know  
my name but whether or not the collar wrapped  
around my chubby mixed up mess of chin and neck  
meant that I couldn't come back to your place.  
Did I have a Dom waiting for me at home?  
Some Master or Mistress, well-skilled with a whip?  
(Of course I didn't. Of course I just wanted to put it  
out there for any hypothetical takers that I'm a sub.  
But how could you have known that?)

Going out that night, I'd expected to go home alone.  
Going out that night, I didn't dream that anyone  
would want to escort my fat ass anywhere.  
Going out that night, I still dwelled on my last Duchess  
— ensconced in my phone, painted in too nostalgic a shade  
for how grey and sour our things went — but you shook me loose  
even before you kissed me — hot and sticky wet and  
stinking like our cocktails — you rocked my world  
like sitting on the San Andreas Fault.  
But I didn't trust you, either, not entirely  
because mine is a coward's heart that hides in corners  
and tries to share its name without being asked  
while you're jerking me to my knees by the  
O-ring on my neck.

True to form, you shushed me up.  
Your fingers slipped over my mouth  
insisted themselves upon my lips  
just like your hair-shirt rug dug at my skin  
and you whispered, _Just you stop that, Precious._  
Did I tell you you could speak.  
Do you really want to egg me on.  
(You hadn't and I did  
and the name I gave you was some bullshit anyway.)

(Not that I meant to lie to you.  
Not that I could even form those thoughts,  
not with your nails deep inside my love-handles  
not with your tongue and teeth between my legs.  
But you had a poster for _The Tempest_ hanging on the wall  
and if you could be Miranda, even in some high school capacity  
even if you couldn't help what your parents named you  
or could have but chose not to for whatever reason  
then I wanted to be Beatrice, even if they come from different plays.)

No other Dominant's taken me apart the way that you can.  
No other Mistress has made me scream just from her attentive ministrations,  
the careful juxtaposition of her licks and bites  
and burning so much fiercer than the fire that you started  
was the simple truth: I had to trust you.  
I didn't know you and I had to trust you.  
Something more uncomfortable than straining to wrap my lips around  
that hard black ball-gag that you love so well.  
It warmed underneath my skin, that knowledge.  
It clawed and tickled past my muscles, tendons, and my ligaments  
until it reached my bones and had to scrape  
And it made me sick — too many times, I thought  
you'd next find me kneeling in the temple of your bathroom floor  
upchucking all the way back to last week's breakfast—  
but I didn't. But you wouldn't let me. But you kept me safer than you promised.  
But your hands have shag rugs underneath their gauntlets  
and you kept me anchored in the quagmire between pain and pleasure.  
There's just something sharp and hot about that kind of reliability.

You know the rest but it's not history  
because history exists to be studied in universities  
have papers written picking it apart  
and any moves made at analysis like that  
would miss the totality of our moment  
miss the details that truly made it  
in favor of some high-minded malingering  
over what it really means  
As though it needs to mean anything more  
than what it was: the little misdeed that let us get together.

It's not my fault you didn't have a passcode on your phone.  
Or that I couldn't fully shake the rush you set me on that night.  
If you hadn't wanted anything to do with me, you could've  
deleted all the evidence of what I'd done, the number that I left behind, signed Beatrice.

And you didn't.  
And you called me back a few days later.  
(I couldn't count them off and  
still focus on my work, my life.  
Even without trading real names,  
you left me wanting and unsettled,  
wet and eager just to tease out the memories  
of our first night.) Even now, my cunt  
gets hungry for your fingers and your mouth  
I feel ghosts of them as though they're new  
as though I don't hold your hand at Disney movies  
or steal your kisses over dinner when you've told me to behave myself.

as though I'm not called Kitten in your phone  
and you aren't named as Lover inside mine  
and you're someone I just met  
and without cluing me in to your designs  
you're going to make me fall in love with you.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt used: "roleplay."

I've never seen the point in sitting still  
for even when I'm sitting still, I am in motion  
whirling, flicking refuse, picking at the loose threads in my clothes  
The only reason  
that my grade school teachers and ivory-tower academic mentors  
never called me to the carpet?  
is that my mind's a diamond in their eyes.

Diamonds?  
I don't see the point of diamonds.  
They never bend, they never break,  
hard-edged perfect shells that never give but only take  
Maybe I can gleam like one  
sparkle and beguile when I set myself to such an effort  
when I play pretend for purposes purporting at precision  
but I'm an opal if I'm any stone  
all mixed up strands of something-or-other colliding in  
stardust explosions, deep space dreams,  
and I always hover dangerously close—  
I always threaten in the subtext if not the text itself—  
to collapse inside and go the black hole road  
would be a lovely way to go, if you ask me.

I haven't yet.  
I haven't gone that way of things.  
Not now. Not yet.  
But I could've on more than one occasion.  
But I still haven't, yet.  
This strikes me as a great accomplishment  
worthy of epics from the Muses' mouths because really?  
No one gives me enough credit for getting out of bed when that task seems Herculean  
or for letting go of rage and steak knives, for not turning into a serial killer.  
No one gives me enough credit for pretending that I'm normal.

Pretending? Yes. I'm always pretending.  
Everything I say is true, but everything's some kind of lie as well.  
You can't trust me, same as I can't trust myself.  
I'm a hurricane pretending to be human.  
I'm a monster masquerading as mankind  
with a wicked mask too small to hide my real face.

I look down at my trembling fingers and they smack back with surprise.  
Where are my claws? Where did they go? For surely, I should have some.  
But when they grow out and take their place,  
the world better run, if it knows what's good for it  
because they'll slice their way out of my skin in goddamn adamantium.  
Lies will fall away, and all the pretenses, and all the roles that I take on for reasons I can't remember  
and maybe today's the day I'm finally ready to slit some throats.

Don't you worry, Dearheart.  
I'll be gentle with yours.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt used: "begging."

I tear through your flesh like paper snowflakes  
      rend your ice-white skin from nave to chops  
            and unseam you, darling, because I love you best like this.

I love you when you're open for me  
      moist and warm and quivering with the sick beat of your heart  
            with the pulsing ghost in your machine, and I—

I don't know what to say to you.  
I don't know what you want me to say.  
What can I tell you to make this process easier?  
What do you want to hear, Baby?  
What do I have to say?

I grope through your map of organs, blinder than old Tiresias  
      trace my fingers down the slicked up surfaces, shaking  
            leaves beneath my tender, humid gusts of breath, quivering as

I feel my own lungs quail within my chest, their cave, quicken and  
      battering against my ribs as if to break them  
            as if to make me break for messying my hands in your inner muck

Because I need to feel your soul twist up on my fingertips  
      Because I want to worm down deeper still, stick and scrape them on your tendons  
            Because I love you, darling, dearest, but I need to understand your love.

Please help me understand it?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt used: "plushie or furry kink."

My lover is a monster,  
she comes to me at night  
with her talons bared and fangs all gleaming  
below the glimmering moon and smattering of stars  
And she hooks one curled claw around me  
strokes it down my face and whispers  
 _you don't have to worry, dearheart_  
 _everything will work itself out in time._

My lover is a monster  
who kisses me with mandibles that dwarf my head  
from one of her many mouths  
Each one's on a different head, and every head's a different animal  
Lions and tigers and zebras and panthers and bears  
and kittens and tiger sharks and platypodes and octopi  
some kind of giant adder who only holds back her poison for my lips  
and some insectoid something or other I don't recognize  
because it comes from a galaxy far, far away.

My lover is a monster  
and she embraces me with tentacles  
as thick around as my flabby thighs  
Suckers puck and smack against my skin  
as I kiss on the head that looks like an Orca whale  
and I know that she could kill me without a second thought  
snap my neck like chicken bones or pretzel sticks  
drain my blood without breaking a goddamn sweat  
but there's gentleness in all her strength  
and I can't believe she'd ever spare someone so weak as I.

My lover is a monster  
I haven't missed that in looking at her, thank you so much for asking  
but what you can't see is that we belong together  
because I'm a monster, too.  
My tongue spews corrosive acid  
My tentacles put themselves away quite nicely  
you'd never even know about them if I hadn't told you  
Her wings put mine to shame, though  
all leathery and black and bat-like  
while my feathers ruffle up so easily and I can't be bothered  
to fix up the mess when no one notices them in the first place.

My lover is a monster  
and I have no idea what she sees in me  
because my humanoid façade breaks mirrors  
just from looking at them  
I leave trails of shattered glass in my wake  
and I can't let loose and roar like she can.  
But nevertheless she comes to me  
and nuzzles up along my back,  
wraps a wing around my waist,  
and I relax against her body, into her freezing cold embrace  
that's warmer to me than anything else on Earth  
and anyway she smells like lime and roses.

My lover is a monster  
but then again? I am as well  
and even though I'm a poor excuse for one  
and even though you'd never tell  
she loves me still, despite my cowardice  
or perhaps because of it.  
I can't be sure but what I know  
is that she's perfecter to me than perfect  
with the dents in her claws and her too-many teeth  
with how she flings teacups at TV sets and  
throws curses at the jags who cut her off on I-96.

My lover is a monster  
but her kisses won't ever be enough for me  
because no matter what she gives me,  
I end up feeling weak for want of more.  
Because like I already told you assholes,  
I'm a monster, too.  
I'm a monster, and I'm starving.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt used: "shaving/depilation."

Kitten, how are your legs doing? This no shave November business is no fun if you're going to hold out on me until after we get back from Thanksgiving at your parents'. I know it's not cold enough for you to wear those thick leggings to bed every night. You're probably thinking something like, "But, Mistress—heat and cold are relative sensations and you can't know how they feel to me just because you don't think it's all that bad!"

But there's the rub, isn't it, Kitten? Because I've played with the thermostat just to get a glimpse of those things you call your legs. Which I'm not saying to objectify you—not this time, anyway, Precious, so sorry to disappoint you, we'll have to save that for another time—but because I don't know what else to call them. They're so soft, so gorgeous, so unnamable. They transcend a simple term like "legs," to be quite honest—but there's nothing else that I can think to call them. All the other words I have for legs are clunky and ill-suited to you.

(Hey, look. You don't have a corner on wanting to get poetic in this relationship. And I'm okay with how I'm not as good at it as you.)

I'm so intrigued by your hair, you know. Especially in projects where we're growing it out. On your legs, underneath your arms, on your snatch, that trail up the lower curve of your stomach. Even those thin, fine, wispy things on your chin. Even the stray one that you always make me pluck for you, since you can't get it on your own. You know the one I mean, Kitten—that one you get over you carotid's pulse point, the one that's longer and thicker, sometimes brown like the hair on your head and sometimes kind of transparent, gleaming in the fluorescent bathroom lights.

I love to watch you wrestle with it, Sweeting. Rolling your fingers over it, brushing them around the soft flesh on your neck until you find what you're looking for, pinching at your skin until you get it pooched out far enough for your tweezers to pluck. You grunt and sigh and grumble strings of obscenities I can't quite make out when you get busy on this or when you pull the hairs out of your beauty marks. Just like how you gasp and wince when you spread the hot wax on your legs and upper lip—does it unnerve you that I love all the noises that you make while cleaning up your excess hair? Because I love them, Kitten.

I even love to watch you shaving, to kick back and observe in silence as you drag your razor up your legs. I watch your hands for any trembles, the smallest tremors that could leave some mark behind or split you open at the skin—and jealousy sparks up amidst concern, leaves me wondering what on Earth your razor's done to be allowed to hurt you when that ought to be my job. But I can't harbor any ill will towards it, when it leaves your smooth skin behind, and when that means that you'll show off your legs for me again.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt used: "gags/silence."

I wouldn't be able  
to tell your lips apart  
if they didn't stretch so nice and  
pink around my big red ball.

You whimper for me  
every now and then again  
better than your noises are  
the moments you spend quiet.

They're improved still for me  
when I don't have to  
tell you to shut up, be silent,  
just appreciate what I can do.

Because I hit all of your ticklish spots  
and drum my fingers up your thighs  
and slip them in your slicked up cunt  
and you flush puce from choking back

everything you're not allowed to say.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt used: "exposure/exhibitionism."

I do not want you in a private place  
of gutless or of absent eyes  
for I don't love you so sequestered off  
so far from the prying gazes of the crowd.  
I want you stripped before them all and bare  
where everyone can see your pale tits, your  
perfect ass, and I want you, Darling,  
shaking, trembling, in your big old boots for me.  
I'll fix your hands up to the whipping post  
or put you in those cold and disused stocks,  
close the manacles around your skinny wrists  
and use a riding crop to stroke your cheek.  
I'll do this, Kitten, while I call you out  
on everything that you've done wrong  
on everything for me that you forgot  
and everyone we know or don't can hear.

I want you like this because you ask me for it  
because my velvet gloves are smacks and slaps  
both verbally and as a handiwork, etched out on your face  
because I can't spell my love without an audience,  
without letting them see my work on you.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt used: "subspace/headspace."

your eyes glazed like painted clay  
your body pliant and your noises weak  
you make the tumblers click together  
you set the gears spinning with no loose screws  
you bring out the best and worst in me.

i can't struggle i can't move  
i can't fight back and i don't want to  
i see myself from the outside in  
i crumple in joy from every crack and  
i would swear that i can fly

I always hate to call you back, when  
I hold you close and stroke your hair  
I set my whips and crops and toys aside and  
I caress your face, instead, with fingers  
I tremble, quake until you move for yourself again.

You could never really hurt me  
You would never really try  
You tear down my faces walls and lies  
You set me down the paths that i can't find alone  
You lift me up and set me free


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt used: "enemas."

Hold it in, Sweetheart,  
squirm a little better,  
be good or else  
I know it hurts  
but I won't remove  
your bulb just yet.

Hold it in, Sweetheart,  
keep it safe until  
it's time to flush.


End file.
